I work as a corporate recruiter in my day job, and I’ve been doing it for over 20 years now, so I really do feel like I know one or two things about resume writing. From time to time, I’ll share some of my nuggets of wisdom… like today 🙂 I review hundreds of resumes every week, and truly I don’t spend that much time on them. I don’t know about 10 seconds and such, but it’s basically long enough to figure out if you meet the minimum requirements or not. With that said, my first two points are:

The Print: Don’t use fancy fonts. Stick with Arial, Times New Roman, or Verdana. We need to be able to read it, both at 1:00 p.m. and at 1:00 a.m. (yes, I work into the night on some regular basis). If your font has “comic,” “joker,” or “ghoul” in the name, changes are THAT’S THE WRONG FONT TO USE! Use a font size that doesn’t cause me to squint; you’ll just make me angry! Use 10 or 12 size font. Make sure your grandma can read it.

The Content: The content is the most important thing on your resume. Make sure your resume contains information that will lead someone to know without a doubt that you meet the minimum qualifications. For example, if we require 10 years of experience, why would you think it’s okay to only list the last three jobs you had that equals 8 years of experience? This just happened to me about a week ago: I was looking for two years of adminstrative support experience. The candidate indicated that on the second to the last line on her resume! Why would you hide it? Do you really think people are reading every single word of your resume? REALLY?

I have so much more to say on this subject, but I’ll save it for next time. Good hunting…